Blasphemous: Dark and brutal 2D non linear platformer

$333,246

9,869

Goal Achieved!

You have successfully help us reach our campaign goal of $50,000 in little less than 24 hours! Thank you all!

But this is just getting started, check out the Stretch Goals we have prepared:

Blasphemous is an action-platformer that combines the fast-paced, skilled combat of a hack-n-slash game with a deep and evocative narrative core, delivered through exploration of a huge universe comprised of non-linear levels.

Immerse yourself in a dark fantasy nightmare that has been constructedPIXEL BY PIXEL by our committed artists.

The core of Blasphemous is the fast, intense and satisfying action combat. You will fight and slay creatures, each one bigger and more fearsome than the last.

Chain encounters at the right pace and you will unlock the Martyr’s Excommunication mode, becoming almost unstoppable.

Epic boss battles await you in your journey through the lands of Orthodoxia. If you manage to survive its inhabitants, your skills will be challenged by the enormous and fierce creatures that rule this damned universe.

Explore a huge land, a universe that feels as open as it is oppressive, delivered through a non-sequential level design that puts you in control of where to go next.

We are putting great focus on achieving a very satisfying combatmechanics with very responsive control, smooth animations and lots of blood and gore.

Handmade pixel art, with large sprites and super smooth animations, created pixel by pixel, frame by frame.

Evocative narrative: Blasphemous’ levels are not just platforms; they tell a story to those who are interested, but don't get in the way if you just want the action.

We’re proud to announce that we have teamed up with a very experienced development partner to be able to release the game simultaneously on all these platforms!

Set in the savage land of Orthodoxia, a place where religion is of the utmost importance in the eyes of the populace, superstition runs amok, and churches outnumber people two to one. You will find yourself in this hellish territory in the wake of the Age of Corruption.

...The High Pontiff was entirely transformed into a great, withered and barren tree and burned for ninety days and ninety nights...

...Riddled with frustration at their insufficient devotion, The High Pontiff heaved his golden throne with and turned the entire throne back. Years passed and all of a sudden it appeared something was beginning to change in the state of the High Pontiff. Dried out, dying branches began to emerge from the ends of his fingers and slowly started growing out from all over his pallid, immobile body. The High Pontiff was transformed into a great, withered and barren tree and began to burn for ninety days and ninety nights...

...A huge mountain of ash stood in its place, topped by the infamous turned throne, unoccupied and unguarded...

...Once the tree had been entirely consumed by the flames, a huge mountain of ash stood in its place, topped by the infamous turned throne, unoccupied and unguarded. The remaining church leadership scrambled upwards to reach the top and assume the throne. But the mountain begin to shift beneath their feet and before long the mountain of ash had swallowed up each and every soul who had been present in the Cathedral. From the ashes rose those poor unfortunate souls who had been swallowed up, transformed into horrible, deformed and bloodthirsty beasts, wildly aggressive and violent in nature, but with their faith intact...

In Blasphemous, you will play as The Penitent One, a rogue nomad tackling the evil of this world alone with only its trusty sword by their side.

The Penitent One is the last survivor of a congregation called The Silent Sorrow. The whole group was punished to be thrown to the great Abyss of the Eternal Grief.

Here you will see some of the horrific and inhuman enemies our pixel artists came up with over the last few months. More scarier and larger creatures will follow soon!

Acolyte

Flagellant

Sister of the Our Lady of the Burnt Face

Weight of her burden

Condemned

Processioner

The Penitent One

Procession of Flagellants, 1793 - Francisco Goya

In Blasphemous, we’ve set ourselves an artistic challenge: Can we create a dark fantasy world that is universally appealing, but also deeply inspired by the most meaningful icons of our local folklore? If you play Blasphemous, chances are that you may want to visit the city of Seville (Spain) in the future, to see the locations, traditions and culture that inspired the game.

Skyline of the city of Seville (Spain)

We are lucky to have Carlos Viola’s mastery on board. He's the award-winning composer of 'The Last Door', and other remarkable indie titles like 'Pharaonic' (by Milkstone), 'Six sides of the world' and 'Rotor'scope'.

This time around, he will be directing the work on both the Original Soundtrack and the audio design.

Listen to the first theme of the soundtrack:

If you don’t know the works of Carlos Viola, we recommend you start by checking out his amazing work for ‘The Last Door’, available on Spotify.

'The Last Door' is an award winning point and click horror adventure. It’s a series of 8 playable episodes, developed using crowdfunding between 2013 and 2016. Initially, they were launched for browsers, but now you can enjoy them in their Collector’s Editions for PC, iOS, Android and Windows Phone.

Our previous title, ‘The Last Door’, was developed together with its community, with frequent discussion, beta builds, and incorporating community feedback in every possible way. For ‘Blasphemous’ we want to take this concept even further.

We offer our backers several levels of involvement with the project’s development:

The Penitent (20 $) an up: We love transparency! Any pledge that includes the game will give you access to frequent development updates.

The Follower (25 $) and up: This pledge will grant access to a private development forum, where you will be frequently asked for feedback, participate in polls and help us with decision-making, plus access to the game's beta.

The Disciple (40 $), The Immortal (200 $) and up: you’ll get access to our private channels on Slack/Discord, where all the design discussions will take place, one-on-one conversation with the development team, enjoy monthly (unfinished) builds and all future prototypes of the game.

The work on Blasphemous started in November 2016. The first stages involved the creation of the first bunch of concept art, to explore the artistic themes we wanted the game to feature. We’ve been working non-stop since then, and indeed completed some key milestones along the way.

We are now preparing to switch from pre-production to production, and that’s when we need you on board!

We’re currently prototyping the second layer of gameplay, involving narrative and exploration mechanics. We're in the process of measuring the production scope and testing every required production pipeline. After that, we will confidently enter the production stage!

From there, we have laid out a roadmap of frequent milestones (please note these dates are subject to change, although we are confident in our production dates):

June. 2017 - Aesthetics prototype (If the campaign succeeds, available for all backers, for Win/Mac/Linux!)

So far, this project has been completely fueled by our own money. Bringing the game to Kickstarter now will enable us to get the extra funds we need to fully realize our artistic goals while retaining full creative control. For us, and particularly for Blasphemous, this is critical because of the potentially controversial topics we are featuring in the game.

At the same time, it creates a community around the game we can rely on to make the game truly awesome! While creating our previous game ‘The Last Door’, we experimented with opening the development process to the community. It was not only the most amazing experience, but it also helped the game become really extraordinary, reaching quality standards that we never hoped to achieve on our own, thanks to the collective intelligence.

This project is promoted by Jellop, a direct response online advertising agency specializing in Kickstarter campaigns on Facebook Ads and Google AdWords.

Risks and challenges

When you are about to embark on any project there will always be a certain amount of trepidation. You can list all of the ‘What ifs’ until you’re blue in the face. There is a long road ahead of us from our current development stage to our final product release and it would be foolish to assume it will all be smooth sailing. However, we are experienced developers, having successfully steered a three-year development project right before this one, so we feel confident we will know how to manage the unexpected.

Some of the areas of expertise required for this project are beyond our skill set, particularly the ones related to porting the game to consoles, and the ones related to marketing. We will seek strategic partners to go where we cannot go on our own.

Finally it’s worth mentioning that due to the controversial and mature nature of some of the themes and visuals, we may have to prepare ourselves to fight a couple of battles against censorship, political correctness or etiquette here and there, but we’re confident that if we have the support of you backers, we will be able to manage it in a way that it is satisfactory to most parties.

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge $40 or more
About $40

The Disciple (Consoles)

Art book in PDF, and full access to development materials: monthly builds and playable prototypes (PC only), chat with the development team in our private Slack channel, and play the Alpha (PC only) release of the game.

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge $60 or more
About $60

The Scribe

A full-color printed version of the art book, containing all production art work, both used and discarded concepts and pixel work, detailed back story, characters and lore of the game, selected works of invited artists and fan art.

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge $60 or more
About $60

The Scribe (Consoles)

A full-color printed version of the art book, containing all production art work, both used and discarded concepts and pixel work, detailed back story, characters and lore of the game, selected works of invited artists and fan art.

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge $2,000 or more
About $2,000

The Blasphemer

Join the development team as we celebrate the launch of the game in Seville (Spain).
We will visit all the mysterious locations and share with you all the meaningful folklore of Seville that has inspired the worlds of Blasphemous. Spend launch day in our office, live stream the final game with us, go for dinner with the team and receive a customised console signed by the team. Everything included in 'The Disciple' tier plus ALL physical rewards! Travel fees not included, accommodation included up to 2 people.